Since the terrorist attacks on the United States in September 2001, a new awareness has arisen about vulnerability of drinking reservoirs to radiological, chemical, and biological threats from terrorists. The U.S. Homeland Security Department has mandated that defensive measures be taken to protect the nation's water supplies from terrorist attack. Yet few systems are available today that provide cost effective early-detection and response systems for warning of attacks on our water supplies. Existing approaches using periodic sampling do not suffice to protect the civilian population from water supply contamination, leaving municipalities with few safety choices and limited options for complying with the Homeland Security mandate.
In the western U.S., for example, water resources are becoming increasingly precious, as demands on water utilization increase. This trend may well make the western water supplies of the U.S. especially vulnerable to terrorist attack that could simultaneously affect many of the cities of the southwest. The need to protect those valuable resources is especially acute.
In addition to the limited availability of reservoir protection systems, a fundamental problem is that, even if such systems were available, the government is hard pressed to defend against the myriad of biological, chemical and radiological threats that terrorist organizations have at their disposal today. Once an attack occurs on a single municipality with some unexpected agent, the demand for detectors of that agent can be expected to skyrocket. The market needs a rapid response system that can quickly provide sensors customized for the latest threat once it is identified. That requirement places an enormous burden on the manufacturing capacity of those sensors. A strategy is needed to prepare for the expected surge in demand after a terrorist event. A solution for these problems must be versatile and flexible, capable of responding in time to emergency situations. What is needed is an early warning system that can provide a real-time response, to prevent water resource disasters.